Police on Monday were trying to figure out exactly how a 23-year-old driver in a town near Chemnitz managed to crash his car into a church roof seven meters off the ground.

Forget the "Dukes of Hazard." In the eastern German town of Limbach-Oberfrohna on Sunday night, a 23-year-old driver speeding through the town center lost control of his vehicle, launched off an embankment and ended up smashed into the roof of the village church some seven meters (23 feet) up.. And far from driving a 1969 Dodge Charger, as Bo and Luke Duke favored, the man was behind the wheel of a modest Skoda Octavia station wagon.Just how the driver, who was evacuated out of the church attic and taken to the hospital with serious injuries, ended up flying so high remains something of a mystery. Police officer Knut Wagner told reporters merely that "the driver took off due to unexplained circumstances, flew some 30 meters (98 feet) through the air and ended up seven meters up in the church roof."

Police surmise that the driver's speed caused him to miss a corner and hit the embankment. The roof of the church was seriously damaged by the car, which remained lodged in the timbers until a crane could be brought in to remove it.

A blood test is to reveal whether the driver was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the incident. When asked just how such an accident could happen, Wagner responded: "That is a very good question. I've never seen anything like it."

Specialists, including physicists, are at the scene trying to reconstruct exactly what happened.